source: Frightened City

"The Killer That Stalked New York" proves that America was just as germophobic and epidemic obsessed in 1950 as it is today. The germ in this particular movie is smallpox, but substitute anthrax or H1N1 and you've got present-day U.S. of A. Evelyn Keyes plays a woman smuggling diamonds in from Cuba who's carrying the disease but unaware that she has it. The longer she tries to hide and run from the law, the more people she exposes to the illness. The film is a weird hybrid of crime thriller and public service message. The diamond smuggling storyline is almost a MacGuffin, an excuse to shoe-horn around it lots of speeches about the vulnerability of a great city like New York to an epidemic and the importance of getting vaccinated against communicable diseases. Smallpox is personified into a malicious killer to the point that it becomes laughable. I half expected to see a smallpox germ itself lurking around a corner, twirling a silent movie villain mustache and giggling insanely. The movie doesn't even try to plug its many plot holes, the biggest one being an explanation of how Keyes manages to run around the city for days with smallpox while others she comes in contact with for a mere second seem to drop dead within hours. Grade: B

Evelyn Keyes is a diamond smuggler who smuggles in death in the form of smallpox in "The Killer that Stalked New York," a 1950 noir also starring Charles Korvin, William Bishop, Jim Backus, Dorothy Malone, Lola Albright, and Ludwig Donath. Keyes plays Sheila Bennet, who mails diamonds back to her cheating husband (Korvin) from Cuba, and then returns to him in New York. Unfortunately, he's involved with Sheila's sister (Albright), so he sends her to a hotel. Feeling ill, she seeks medical care from a doctor (Bishop). In the waiting room, she meets a little girl who later develops smallpox. Sheila was incorrectly diagnosed and is now spreading the disease all over town while the city attempts to find the carrier. This is a kind of B version of "Panic in the Streets" and not as good, but it is an effective noir with a fine performance by Keyes as a desperate woman with a will to keep going no matter what. Though Keyes was good-looking and talented, her off-screen exploits with the men in her life, as well as her opinions of Hollywood, are more well-known than her film roles, which were mostly in B movies. The great irony of her career is that she's best known for her smallest role, Suellen O'Hara in "Gone with the Wind." "The Killer that Stalked New York" is a good showcase of her abilities.

Sheila Bennet is smuggling diamonds into the country and arrives at New York City's Pennsylvania Station after a trip to Cuba. She fears being followed by the feds. Unbeknownst to her, she's also carrying something deadly. She returns to her husband Matt Krane who is actually cheating on her with her own sister Francie. Dr. Ben Wood has to deal with an outbreak in the city which traces back to Sheila. This movie has two parallel manhunts going at the same time. It really should do one or the other. This should be either Outbreak or a crime noir. The crime noir seems to be the one taking a back seat. The Outbreak is not done in the most exciting way either. This movie is caught in two worlds and not succeeding in any of them. Both have some interesting aspects but the two sides are stepping on each other.

Who thought up this great idea? The Killer that Stalked New York is a wonderful cross-genre film-noir and medical thriller where small-pox stalks New York in the guise of attractive jewel smuggler Sheila Bennett (Evelyn Keyes). This film is an unexpected treasure -- besides the unique plot twist, nearly every role is played by a terrific character actor. Many of them are uncredited, but if you don't recognize them by name you'll know them by face. One of the biggest stars is New York City itself pre-1950 -- street shots include wonderful ID's of the Times Square area and the Third Avenue El before it was razed. There's even a cameo by the legendary Owl Drug Company -- though you'll have to play that scene in slo-mo to catch it. One thought that kept crossing my mind -- this is New York well before it became the film location capital of the country: how did they manage to clear all those mid-town streets for scenes? If not, how did they manage to get all those shots without having some passing Joe breaking into the shot all the time? The acting is classic '50's -- slightly overdramatized...and the twin plots move nicely in sync toward the crescendo. The ending? With the twin noir/med thriller plots I'm sure the writer worked overtime to come up with this one and it didn't disappoint. Well worth the watching...

Along with "Panic in the Streets," "The Killer That Stalked New York" is another film from 1950 Hollywood about the search for a murderous carrier of disease--in this case, smallpox. It becomes clear early on that this B-picture is the lesser of the two films. It's attempts at noir stylization tend to be hamfisted. The narrator isn't a character and is generally pointless, if not annoying. The entire criminal subplot involving betrayal, a love triangle and smuggled diamonds isn't intriguing. That the blonde femme fatale is literally and unintentionally killing people by carrying, unbeknownst to her, smallpox is an unfortunately kind of an amusing twist on the trope. Moreover, the doctors' surprised reactions to smallpox appearing in New York would verge on the laughable, as they repeatedly exclaim shock at the prospect that such a then-still-not-eradicated disease could be found in their civilized sphere of the world, if it didn't seem prescient given today's real-world pandemic and its effects on the city, or had there not actually been a smallpox outbreak and mass vaccination program in New York in 1947. Much of the movie merely plays out like an advertisement for vaccinations. It figures, too, that for all the characters' fears of the death toll the disease will wrought, the only character that we actually see die from it--and not only hear about--is a Black man.

Killer That Stalked New York, The (1950) ** 1/2 (out of 4) B-budget noir about a female diamond smuggler (Evelyn Keyes) who is trying to sneak some priceless diamonds into NYC from Cuba. While the police are tracking her down they learn that the woman also has smallpox, which threatens the entire city. The story here is a very interesting one but sadly the film never manages to do anything with it. The film really doesn't know if it wants to settle on the diamond story or the smallpox one and the two really don't mix well together. The biggest problem is the direction, which is also all over the place. With a story like this you'd expect some sort of tension or suspense but none never happens. Keyes is pretty good in her role but the screenplay really doesn't do her any justice as our feelings for her character are never really made clear. Charles Korvin, William Bishop and Dorothy Malone round out the cast. The ending is pretty good and picks the film up a bit but that's about all there is.

Sheila Bennet (Evelyn Keyes) is hot. She's just arrived from Cuba with some smuggled diamonds and a federal agent is shadowing her. She also has a fever from the small pox she is carrying onto the docks of New York. With the country presently in the mist of a viral outbreak that has the entire state under quarantine and the country on full alert The Killer that Stalked New York is as pertinent today as it was when it was released in 1950. Based upon an outbreak in Queens that took place in 1947 it is given a felonious back story with a sleazy rogues gallery of marginals making the outbreak that much more slippery to contain. Similar in theme and topic to the earlier released that year Panic in the Streets, it lacks the polish and form of the Kazan as it takes on a documentary feel at times but it does boast a fine performance from the desperate Keyes while Charles Korvin makes for a loathsome villain.

In April 1947, New York City faced an epidemic crisis. Eugene LaBar, a rug importer arriving from Mexico, had arrived in the city, bringing with him the deadly smallpox virus. He stumbled off a bus, complaining of fever and a headache, and soon died in a Midtown Hospital, but not before he had infected a dozen passers-by. The damage was already done; for the first time in decades, smallpox stalked the streets of New York. The city's health authorities acted quickly to isolate sufferers and contain the virus, enacting a free vaccination campaign that saw over six million New Yorkers immunised against smallpox. Thanks to their swift response, the virus was contained with minimal casualties. The outbreak, nevertheless, must have left an indelible mark, for several years later it was followed by two similarly-themed film noir thrillers in which doctors must track down a single contagious carrier in a city of millions: Elia Kazan's 'Panic in the Streets (1950)' and Earl McEvoy's lower-budget 'The Killer That Stalked New York (1950).' McEvoy's film unfolds in an unglamorous docu-drama style. Reed Hadley's narration sounds as though it was plucked straight from a newsreel, reciting facts as if reading off the official police transcript. This technique does feel a little cheap at times, but fortunately the narration is largely restricted to the film's bookends, as well as providing some explanatory filler during breaks in the plot. The "killer" stalking New York, in this story, is not a rug importer from Mexico, but beautiful diamond smuggler Sheila Bennet (Evelyn Keyes), who has just arrived from Cuba. Within days, Sheila has two parties independently pursuing her: a treasury agent (Barry Kelley) looking to arrest her for smuggling crimes, and a team of doctors (led by William Bishop) who have identified her as the source of the smallpox outbreak. As in 'Panic in the Streets,' an otherwise routine manhunt is given a heightened sense of urgency, particularly when those in pursuit initially have no idea as to the identity or appearance of their suspect. 'The Killer That Stalked New York,' for the most part, manages to sidestep its low production budget. Aside from a select few lines of dialogue ("we have to stop it!" exclaims Dr. Wood at one point, as though coming to a difficult decision), the filmmakers and cast members allow the story to unfold in a realistic, engrossing fashion. Indeed, in this regard, the low budget quite possibly aids the film's intentions, necessitating a documentary style that adds to the immediacy of the outbreak scenario. Evelyn Keyes is excellent in the leading role, showing obstinate resilience in the face of unimaginable torment; by the film's end, she appears so brutally incapacitated by her illness that it's almost painful to look at her face. Aside from the virus, Charles Korvin is the main villain of the piece, as Sheila's greedy and adulterous husband who, rest assured, gets everything that's coming to him. And if all nurses looked like Dorothy Malone, perhaps catching smallpox wouldn't seem like such a bad break, after all.

Robert Osborne, in introducing this movie to the Turner Classic Movie audience for the first time tonight, says that Columbia had to sit on the movie for about 6 months in order to let the similarly-plotted "Panic in the Streets" play out and leave the theaters. What we have then is a gritty, somewhat newsreel sounding (and looking) film whose narrator walks us through all the ironies of modern urban epidemiology. Worth noting, though, are the few scenes out in the street where the tragic couple lives. There's just enough street noise and confusion to make the scenes as claustrophobic as possible, while still being somehow life-affirming. Otherwise, it's a fine B noir plot with a lot of character and muscle, and cinematography to take off your hat to. Not to mention that hot kid sister -- hubba, hubba!